What is Hypertime? (The real thread this time)

[Lorendiac]

There's a 100-character limit per option that cramped my style a little, so here's the original full text for what I meant by each option, if you want to look it over before voting in the Poll function above.


1. A clever way to more-or-less restore the endless possibilities of the Pre-Crisis Multiverse.

2. A nasty, sneaky, unnecessary way to more-or-less restore the confusing and convoluted complications of the messy concept once known as the Pre-Crisis Multiverse, only this time it was worse than before.

3. A lazy excuse for writers to ignore or retcon or reboot each other's work on a regular basis, saying, "Gee, the Hypertimelines must have shifted again - my predecessor's work on this title has just been largely undone and is now 'out of continuity' in the mainstream DCU timeline until Hypertime shifts again and puts it squarely in continuity again!"

4. A very nice rationalization that provides some sort of "explanation" for what DC's writers were already doing on a regular basis and would have continued to do whether "Hypertime" was invented as an excuse or not - retconning and rebooting and just plain ignoring one another's past continuity.

5. The way of the future - a good idea that needs to get more attention and have a few bugs worked out, but deserves to be further explored.

6. An embarrassment that ought to be swept under the rug as quickly as possible and quietly forgotten.

7. I don't know and I don't care - I just hope DC keeps it out of my favorite titles so I won't have to tear my hair out trying to make sense of it. If they want to go on and on about it in any titles I don't bother to read regularly, that's fine.

8. None of the Above (Please explain)

******

And if you want to refresh your memory of the details of what has been stated or suggested (or theorized by fans) about Hypertime, here are a couple of links.

"Time and Hypertime" - http://www.hyperborea.org/flash/hypertime.html

"The Unofficial Hypertime Website" - http://travel.to/hypertime

[Ontir]

Hyper-time is an editorial device, which allows writers/editors to line-item alter continuity, without having to do a company wide event. That's what was discussed when it was first talked about, but it hasn't really been used that way, so far. That's what it should be, though.

[davids]

first when kingdom come was first coming out was it described as the future of the DC universe, in the promotion?

Superboy traveled thru hupertime so it's real, so the events in the kingdom really happened. You would think clark diana and bruce would mention meeting their older selves, most of all a son. A son they all met as an adult. You would think they would talk it over some time.

Is hypertime an escuse for elseworld stories? If so why, I like those tales and don't need hypertime to explain them.

So is Hypertime only reason for being is to explain Superman, batman and wonderwoman being active in the 40, 50, 60, 70ths? any one care to answer?

[Lorendiac]

first when kingdom come was first coming out was it described as the future of the DC universe, in the promotion?

I bought Kingdom Come when it was first coming out as four installments, an Elseworlds miniseries, and I don't recall anyone promising us at the time that it was The Official Future of the DCU, if that's what you're asking. After all, it had the Elseworlds logo on it, meaning it was just one possible variation of what might happen to DCU characters.

Superboy traveled thru hupertime so it's real, so the events in the kingdom really happened. You would think clark diana and bruce would mention meeting their older selves, most of all a son. A son they all met as an adult. You would think they would talk it over some time.

By the same token, you would think that when Jeph Loeb had Superman and Batman meet the newest Kara Zor-El, Supergirl, for the first time, that they would talk about the other Kara Zor-El Peter David had created, and all the other Supergirl characters either of them had met over the years in the Post-Crisis continuity. But no other Kara or Supergirl character was ever mentioned in the six-part Superman/Batman story arc that introduced the newest one.

In other words, if a writer at DC doesn't want to be "burdened" by referring to emotionally powerful events that happened to a superhero in stories written by somebody else, then the new writer simply ignores those previous stories 100% and basically acts as if the superhero has developed Total Amnesia and doesn't remember that old story any more.

Is hypertime an escuse for elseworld stories? If so why, I like those tales and don't need hypertime to explain them.

Not exactly. Elseworlds stories are usually completely isolated from the "mainstream" DCU - there's no travel back and forth from one parallel world to the other in a typical "Elseworlds" story. Hypertime provides an excuse for characters to travel to alternate timelines and then return to their native timeline. But I believe the main excuse it provides is for retcons and reboots - things like Joe Kelly (I think) writing an issue of JLA in which Plastic Man has a long-lost illegitimate son, and then later in the "Plastic Man" series a different writer has Plas say loud and clear that he doesn't have any children. (I haven't actually read that one, but I heard about it somewhere.) Or the thing I mentioned above where Jeph Loeb had Supes and Bats react as if the idea of a "Kara from Krypton" or "Supergirl" was a Strange and New Concept for both of them.

So is Hypertime only reason for being is to explain Superman, batman and wonderwoman being active in the 40, 50, 60, 70ths? any one care to answer?

Has much been done with that idea outside of Elseworlds? I don't think that was Mark Waid's motivation when he first wrote about Hypertime.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

When Kingdome Come came out In 1996 , DC had pretty much streamlined thier Universe In 1994's Zero Hour. It had a set timeline and the days of alternate universes was over. DC had Elseworlds and those filled that need.

Then Kingdom Come came out and blew the Industry away. DC saw the response and started thinking...hey that Cog and Magog are Interesting. And hey how can we Incorparte some of KC ?

So DC sit down with Mark Waid and told him they wanted some of Kingdom Come to be In the DCU. So Waid knew that DC had mandated that Kingdom Come was an Elesworlds series and they had said all Elseworlds took place outta DC Continuty.

Then Waid brought.....HYPERTIME. A unique concept that would explain different timelines. This was a way to say that Kingdome Come did happen, but In a different DCU Timeline ! It did take place and then DC went ahead and said all Elseworld tales did take place In the DCU.

So HYPERTIME pretty much made all Elseworld stories happen. And opened up alternate timelines again.

[Viking Bastard]

This is something I slapped together sometime:

Think Planetary's snowflake. But everchanging.

Hypertime takes the 'everbranching tree of possibilities' concept (a classic sci-fi concept created neither by Marvel, Moorcock, Star Trek or Grant Morrison) and takes it to a new extreme. Everchanging continuity, timelines branch off each other and join together. Parasite realities feed off the imaginations of larger timelines, while stray concepts travel from one reality to another.

Think of it like this: The pre-crisis multiverse was a 'tangle' of timelines, slightly influencing each other, like the adventures of the JSA becoming comic books in the JLA universe. Over time, as the 'gravitational pull' of the DCU 'tangle' increased by it's sheer conceptual mass, they started to pull more and more realities into it's 'orbit', like the Fawcett and Charlton universes. With time, as the different universes interacted more and more, the membrane seperating them became thinner and thinner, more and more concepts and ideas slipping through until finally they were joined into one, larger reality (that is, via Crisis). This did not only change the newly born universe's today and future, but the past as well. It did not become a new reality, it had always been that reality.

But realities don't always join, but split, too. Like the Image universe. When it was born, bred from stray ideas from different sources, it was a solid whole, but after while it began to break apart, first into a 'tangle' of related timelines, but over time they started to stray away, some forever wandering through limbo (like Rob Liefeld's stuff) and some drawn to other tangles (Wildstom joining the DCU).

There are forever small short-lived realities branching off the larger ones (Elseworlds), sometimes taking a life of their own (like the Kingdom Come and DKR universes), sometimes withering away into nothingness or bleeding into other worlds (most EWs). Every once in a while two branches from different realities collide, creating strange Amalgam-like universes.

As new timelines and stray concepts branch into and away from the main DCU timeline, it forever changes, eternally remaking itself. Sometime in the past the Doom Patrol became unhinged from the main DCU, going into Vertigo territories, bleeding in and out of core continuity, until it finally split away. But a seed of the concept remained, from which there blossomed a new Doom Patrol. Only time will tell if the old Doom Patrol will bleed back into continuity or if the new one will last.

Everything is connected in a ever-shifting network of worlds and ideas, forever branching into all directions, backwards to the past as well as forward to the future and sideways into other worlds.

Or, y'know, that's how I understand Hypertime.

So, yeah, I like it. It's a good way to loosen the grip of continuity without disregarding it or rebooting/retcon it all the time.

[Calamas]

8 = A poor attempt to restore the essence of the Pre-Crisis Multiverse.

Essentially, I beleive, you got option 3 wrong. It was lazy writers who did away with the Multiverse, claiming it was too confusing for the average reader to understand. Which was crap. Granted, a 16-year-old can hardly be considered a kid, but I had no trouble grasping the concept when I first encountered it at that age. I loved the idea of similar but different universes, each with their own version of various heroes and villains. It encouraged me to expand my exposure to comics without requiring me to do so.

The same with Continuity, the other excuse for doing away with the Multiverse: The chance to start over without the baggage. Again, crap. I loved references to previous stories. It’s why I discovered back issues. It added to the concept of multi-layered universe, which was slowly evolving before me.

And I got to be a part of it. I wanted to be a part of it. It was the mystique of comics.

That’s not to say that every little thing that had happened over the last 50 years (or whatever it was at the time) needed to be held in reverence. Certainly throw out all the stuff that was offensive, outright bad, or just slapped together to meet a deadline. But keep the good, and--maybe especially--the good ideas that were poorly executed. Take it, expand upon; but do it right, move it forward. And if it’s something prominent that is bad and/or is what you don’t like, don’t ignore it and--please oh please--don’t whine about it. Change it. But change it in front of us.

That’s your story.

[Lorendiac]

Over on Newsarama, ManoftheAtom has called my attention to this link:

http://www.comicon.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=36;t=004039

It is an eyewitness report of a Q&A session that was part of a San Diego Comic Con panel on Identity Crisis. The panelists were: Dan DiDio, Bob Wayne, Greg Rucka, Geoff Johns and Stephen Wacker.

The reporter doesn't specify which one said the following, but whoever it was, the other four guys apparently did not contradict the response. Here's the key quote for our purposes:

QUESTION: How does Hypertime factor in to the DCU now?

ANSWER: Hypertime is gone from the DCU.

The word Hypertime does not come up anywhere else in that transcript, so we're left a bit vague on the details. It appears, though, that DC's current policy is in line with the attitude expressed in #6 on my poll: "Sweep it under the rug and forget about it!"

Here are some questions of my own that I wish the SDCC panel had addressed:

1. What happens to stories that explicitly mentioned hypertime? Are they retconned out of existence? (Or are we supposed to believe that there used to be a phenomenon called Hypertime that affected the DCU, but now it's suddenly faded away?)

2. Are all alternate timelines, even ones that were featured in stories that never used the word "Hypertime," now "gone" from the DCU, or just the idea that Mark Waid's proposed rules of Hypertime no longer apply to alternate timelines even though there may still be hundreds of them?

3. What will the new excuse be for the steady tide of retcons, reboots, etc.? All the messy stuff that can happen when everybody thought a bunch of old stories were "in continuity" until a new writer came along who said, "No, no, I don't want to be bothered with that nonsense. Far as I'm concerned, it never happened, or everybody has totally forgotten it and will never refer to it again, or whatever."

You see, in my own poll I voted for #4 on my list of possible answers to the question "What is Hypertime?"

A very nice rationalization that provides some sort of "explanation" for what DC's writers were already doing on a regular basis and would have continued to do whether "Hypertime" was invented as an excuse or not - retconning and rebooting and just plain ignoring one another's past continuity.

So if the word Hypertime is now forbidden as the Official Excuse for Stories that Contradict One Another, what should the new Official Excuse be? Just banning the word "Hypertime" from future discussions of the official continuity of the DCU doesn't solve the problem, unless DC also plans to ban all future retcons and reboots and so forth, so that no Official Excuse for them will be necessary from this day forward? (Seems unlikely.)

And if they carry on with reboots and retcons, without offering a brand new Official Excuse to at least create the illusion of a rational explanation for what's going on, I suspect many people will argue: "There! You see! The timelines of Hypertime must have shifted around again so that so-and-so's origin story that we all knew by heart is no longer valid; a new origin story from an alternate timeline has merged into the main DCU timeline!" The argument would be that just because someone on a panel said there is no more Hypertime didn't mean the DCU wasn't continuing to retcon itself every ten minutes, just as Hypertime had "explained." Therefore, Hypertime was obviously still in effect whether DC's editorial staff liked it or not :)

[Viking Bastard]

So they hypertimed Hypertime?

[davids]

Joker comes to metropolis to kill every one in the daily planet. He does just that, lois dies, Gog kills joker, populace rejects superman, he goes into excille. with out his exsample the meta humans go wild, Kingdom come comes about, Wonder woman have a kid exct....

On the way to metropolis Joker gets a flat tire, doesny kill lois, people don't reject superman, superman stays as an exsample to the meta humans.
lois and clark have a baby, then a few more.

Joker makes it to metroplois kills the news staff, Lois never leaves the computer room is saved. superman is so fearfull he semi retires back to the farm with Lois only leaves during the most dangerous of events!

Each branch leads to anothetr future!

[Expletive Deleted]

And in every one of them there's a super-baby, right?

Sheesh.

[davids]

Just diffrent branches. Joker arives in metropolis, kills Lois, Wonder woman and clark has a kid.

Joker gets a flat, lois doesnt die, no Kingdom come, Lois may or may not have a kid.

Lois runs out of the sealed room, beats joker to death, is charged with man slaughter, she is convicted. superman breaks her out, they go on the run. Winds up living on pardise island were she will be safe.

all of it because joker did or did not run over a broken bottle?

My own opinun is what is wrong with elseworld stories i like them and you dont need a hypertime excuse. Hypertime is the excuse to explain, the golden age and silver age1

[trickster]

8 = A poor attempt to restore the essence of the Pre-Crisis Multiverse.

Essentially, I beleive, you got option 3 wrong. It was lazy writers who did away with the Multiverse, claiming it was too confusing for the average reader to understand. Which was crap.
That’s your story.


Really, that's why they needed a 36 page full text index to explain how it all fit together, which barely scratched the surface so they published another 24 pages of text in the Official Crisis on Infinite Earths Crossover Index. Gimme a break.